From Rednecks to City slickers! (November 11-17)

This week has been full of excitement!

Monday, was kind of a boring Pday, because we didn't have much to do. We went over to Kevin DeCent's later and had dinner and learned how to make Laundry soap, and how to play cribbage though!

Tuesday I packed up in the morning and got ready for the news of where I would be going or if I stayed. When I was packing Kevin DeCent called us and asked us to come over and finish up the dinner he made us last night! So of course we went over and ate the rest of the biscuits. 

We also had an amazing dinner with the Point family and they invited a couple other families from the branch as well as a nonmember family. They were celebrating some birthdays, but it worked out great because I could say goodbye to many of them (I wasn't 100% sure I was leaving but I felt that I would be). They had all sorts of food there and it was really good.

Tuesday night I found out the news... I now cover the Crystal Ward, which covers downtown Minneapolis, and Golden Valley. Definitely a city I tell you what. My mission President told me he wanted to put me in the most different area he could think of, so it is literally opposite of where I was. We ball up every morning, and Thursday night we have church ball with the surrounding stakes, and Saturdays we ball up with a bunch of nonmembers, it's so hype! We cover the same area as some Sister missionaries and they are pretty cool, we see them almost everyday. My companion is Elder Hardwick, born and raised in downtown LA! The last two years before his mission he moved to downtown Dallas, Texas. So he has never lived outside of a city in his life. We actually came out at the same time but we never actually met.

Wednesday I finished the last bit of packing and we headed down to Onamia to say goodbye to Sister McGee and Travis (they are on the way down) and we had lunch with them. It was good to be able to see them one more time before moving on to the next chapter of my mission. Hopefully when Travis gets baptized I can make it back up there with somebody. We drove down to the cities after that and got there about dinner time so we went to Denny's and we ate with the Carlton Elders who came down as well, as their area is getting shut down. We had a great time with Elder Smith and Elder Shifflet (the Carlton Elders)

Thursday was Transfers, we drove down to the mission home, and switched up our companionship, and got our new car for the area. We were actually pretty lucky because for a year or so the Crystal Elders didn't have a car, but they just gave us a car! We then drove over to Chick-fil-a and got some grub there and met up with mission buddies again. We ended up having to drive back over to the mission home to get a gas card for our car, because somebody accidentally took ours and we have no idea who. Then we finally got to go home, and I unpacked, and then we studied and talked about the area, and got me up to date with some of the people they had been working with.

Friday, we had a lesson with a guy named William, and he is so so solid in the gospel. He wants to be baptized but he leaves to Africa in the beginning of December, so we are going to try to connect him to the missionaries where he will be going. We actually biked to his place, and I let Elder Hardwick lead us, because my sense of direction is terrible. Turns out his is just as bad as mine because we took twice as long to get there then what Google maps said, because we took some wrong turns . After that we went back home, and got a ride with a member into downtown Minneapolis, and we took apart a car door and fixed it for a lady. She couldn't get in her car because the handle was way broken so we fixed it for her. It took a little longer than expected so we ended up getting dinner with the member that drove us. His name was Brother Van Heel, and he and his family fed us some Tacos!

Saturday, we did a lot of stop bys to the different members that haven't had any written contact in a couple years or more. We ended up setting up some lessons with some of them, and talked with one guy for a while. Then we went downtown again and had a lesson with a returning member, and he has a solid testimony, it was super cool. Afterwords we went back to the church and taught a guy named Rico with the sisters and we just read from the Book of Mormon with him. He really likes to relate the gospel to Star Wars, but sometimes it's hard to keep him focused in the lessons. He has a really good understanding of it all though! We then sat in the gym and watched all the nonmembers play basketball, because there was so many of them.

Sunday was really uplifting and was a really great day. We had church and it started at 12 here, which is a little different then what I'm used to. After church we had our dinner with the Stevenson family. They were pretty cool, but I could see that Brother Stevenson really wanted to talk about Football.  Neither of us really know much about football. We ended up talking a lot about the new rules and standards for missionaries. After dinner we tried contacting a referral but we didn't have an apartment number and he wasn't on the roster. His number didn't work either. After that we had a member drive us to Mission Presidents Fireside, which was awesome! It's a Fireside where a bunch of converts share their conversion story. Some of them are really funny, but a lot of them are super spiritual! Just a great time. Hopefully I can have those photos for next week.

Sorry for the lack of photos, life's been crazy. Here's one of me, with I funny sign I found! Good luck! Until next time.

-Elder Brown

Mady's Baptism! (November 4-10)

This weeks has been crazy!

Tuesday we didn't have to put on a tie or white shirt. We went and did service at Mel's Mercantile, and we moved some more stuff around as per usual. Then we made Bars of Soap at Kevin DeCent's which was awesome! After having fun with him we went and had dinner with Rusty and Lisa Decent.

Friday we had a really busy day! We woke up in Duluth and did our normal morning routine and then had our accounting meeting with them. We left about 10:30 and drove home. We decided to stop by our branch mission leader on the way because he lives 20 minutes out of town, and it was on the way back from Duluth. After we visited with them, and got them all updated we drove home to pick up a for strength of youth pamphlet, and drove all the way over to Brainerd! The reason we drove to Brainerd and needed the pamphlet was because we were meeting with Mady's dad. We needed parental permission from both her parents, and the dad was a real nice guy. He still doesn't fully understand it, but he sees that the gospel has really helped Mady! He said that everyone has noticed a huge change in her, and that she just seems happy all the time now! So cool! After that we drove over to Crosby (between Aitkin and Brainerd) and went to Mady's mom's house where Mady was at. We gave her my phone so she could skype call our Zone leader to get her interview done. Everything is in place! Then we drove to a members house, the Bill family and had a great time at their house. I laughed more at their house than I have for a while. It was awesome, the kids told embarrassing stories about each other, and we all laughed! Another Great, busy day.

On Saturday was Mady's baptism! So awesome, she invited her family and a couple friends, and there was 6 nonmembers there we had never met! Awesome missionary moment, and it makes total sense, because Mady is an awesome missionary. We gave her family a church tour, and one of her friends was talking to our Branch President for 20 minutes after the baptism asking him all sorts of questions! And best of all Mady felt the spirit at the baptism. Just a great time. That night we went over to Penny's and had dinner, and played with Harvey her dog. It was a great day.

Sunday we gave talks in church, and taught the lesson in Priesthood! After church we rushed home to make and eat some lunch, and then drove the hour drive down to Onamia, taught Travis and Sister McGee a lesson on Alma 42, about the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement. Then we drove an hour back up to Aitkin and taught this nice elderly lady named Mary. We met her through a member, and she said she was willing to take the lessons from us. We taught the restoration and talked for 2 hours, which lead right into playing farkle with Barby. Barby wants to play farkle with us once a week at McDonald's. The unfortunate part of the day, is that since it was Sunday I wasn't going to buy any food, and we hadn't had dinner yet. We finally had dinner at the apartment at 9:30 pm. It was a busy busy day.

Anyways love you all!

-Elder Brown

Maddy's babtism

Birthday Parties and Too much Food (October 21-31)

On Monday, it was Maddy's birthday, so we ended up staying in Aitkin instead of going to Duluth for Preperaton day. We mostly stayed because it was an opportunity to meet with Maddy's mom, and we needed her permission so Maddy can get baptized. When we talked to her she said it was fine, if it was what Maddy felt she needed to do. Yay! Part 1 is accomplished! That night we drove to Duluth, and it was a breathtaking view of the city at night. You drive over a hill, and the entirety of Duluth and Superior come into view. Amazing... since everybody else was proselytizing and we had already done that, we went shopping! We went to the home Depot, and bought Craig our newest companion . We also bought some purple string up lights, for Halloween.

Tuesday we had interviews with President Barney, which was a great time. My interview was almost the last one he did, so we were there for a while. Afterward we drove over to Carlton and started our exchange there. We had a really good time with them, and Elder Shifflet and I, did mostly some tracting.

Wednesday we finished our exchanges and it was a lot of fun! It ended up being all four of us, and we showed up at Barbara's, who is an elderly lady who calls herself Sassy Grandma . She was super fun to talk to, and we raked up her leaves for a couple hours. After that adventure, we headed back home, and went to Mutual. We ended up teaching the young men about parables, and the spirit was there. After Mutual finished we gave Maddy a blessing and she definitely felt the spirit and now has a super strong testimony of priesthood power!

Thursday we had another lesson with Travis and we ended up teaching a little bit about Temples. We also taught the first Vision to him again. Afterwords we went up and had dinner with the Rono's again. We had a lot of fun there and they can't wait to have us over again.

Friday, we had a lesson with a kid that we talked to over Facebook, and he asked questions, but he was still a little immature to understand the gospel, and to live it. Hopefully someday... we were able to have service at Mel's Mercantile again, and it was fun, as usual. We helped move some really heavy couches to someone's house, and he was real friendly to us. He said that he was really surprised that we would help for free.

Saturday we went to Santa's cabin/house. He said that he needed help cleaning out his car, and so we drove down to his cabin, that he lives in year round. After moving some stuff, he showed us all the swords he has, and he had a ton of them. I only got a few photos of the big ones. After that we had dinner with Penny Hacthen, the blind lady we go to every week. She had her son Andrew there from college too.

Sunday, after church we weekly planned and did a lot of necessary paper and device work. That night we had nothing going on so I wanted to go tracting instead of doing nothing. Well, it didn't go over very well with my companion Elder Layton, because he hates knocking doors. Hates it. So we still went, but he made me knock every door, and he stood 10ft or more away. So I knocked all the houses for a couple hours. I basically stopped when it got dark, and more chilly.

Monday was not our Preparation day this week as Halloween is on Thursday. Our mission President did not want us knocking doors on Halloween night, imagine that . So we did service and ate with Grandma Piecek. After lunch we walked over to the Rusty Gun, and talked to all the crazy conspiracy theorists over there, and befriended one of the inactive members that was there. After the Rusty Gun we had dinner with the Crowthers and they had really good smoked meatloaf! We ended up talking about the Hillstead's my home teacher back at home. They lived in Morris Minnesota for a number of years, and that is where Bill Crowther served part of his mission and met his wife Marilyn. Small world...

Tuesday I had exchanges with the Superior elders, and I spent the day with Elder Porter, who has been out a little under 3 months. We spent the day in Crosby, and we service tracted for a couple of hours and did our device audit and then walked back to the car and met up with the Elders. We then went down and ate dinner with the Point's and it was a blast! We had a great dinner and the conversation that followed was better. After dinner we headed up to the DeCent's and celebrated Tyler's birthday! With more dinner... we had already stuffed ourselves at the Point's so we were all super bloated and all were put in a food coma. 

Wednesday we finished our exchange with an interview and went to McDonald's and had lunch with Superior to say goodbye. Then we went over to Bobby Johnson's place and cut and stacked more wood. After about an hour we got through it all, and he thought it would have taken longer, so he decided to feed us, an hour after we had ate... and it was like a Thanksgiving feast. Ugg, I'm so sick of having meat sweats everyday, lol. After we helped with the wood, we went back to Aitkin and cleaned and decorated our car for the trunk or treat. It was a Frozen theme, and we handed out candy with it. We got tons of compliments and the whole branch loved that we participated, but not only that, but that we went full out with it.

Santa's swords

Santa's swords

Ward Trunk or Treat 

Decorated with  the theme of Frozen